Social Media Safety for Teens

The vast major­i­ty of teenagers today have smart­phones and near­ly half report being online ​“almost constantly,” accord­ing to a 2024 sur­vey by the Pew Research Cen­ter. Pop­u­lar dig­i­tal des­ti­na­tions for these youth are social media plat­forms like YouTube, Tik­Tok and Insta­gram. In fact, one Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan study found that eighth, ninth and 10^th graders were spend­ing an aver­age of three and a half hours on social media daily.

Social­iz­ing online has advan­tages and draw­backs. Teens can use these tools to bond with friends, explore trends and con­nect with oth­ers who share their inter­ests. But time online can also cause many chal­lenges for young peo­ple. These con­se­quences include: a rise in men­tal health strug­gles, per­son­al pri­va­cy preach­es, and expo­sure to inap­pro­pri­ate con­tent as well as cyber­bul­ly­ing, cyber hate and sex­u­al groom­ing.

This post is devot­ed to pro­mot­ing social media safe­ty and under­scor­ing what teenagers and adults need to know. It shares advice that every­one — from youth and teach­ers to par­ents and pol­i­cy­mak­ers — can use to pro­mote smarter and safer social media use among teens.

1. Under­stand How Teens’ Infor­ma­tion Is Shared Online 

The busi­ness mod­els of many social media plat­forms hinge on data col­lec­tion. These plat­forms can col­lect and track a wide range of infor­ma­tion to help tai­lor the user expe­ri­ence and increase user engage­ment. These same plat­forms can also share and sell a social media user’s infor­ma­tion to a third-par­ty com­pa­ny or advertiser. 

Exam­ples of infor­ma­tion that social media plat­forms gath­er and share include:

• name;
• birth date;
• geo­graph­ic location;
• gen­der;
• sex­u­al orientation; 
• pho­tos;
• mar­riage status; 
• online inter­ac­tions;
• pur­chas­es;
• per­son­al interests; 
• reli­gious affil­i­a­tion; and
• polit­i­cal affiliation.

Staff from the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion sur­veyed some of the largest social media and video stream­ing ser­vices and deter­mined that these com­pa­nies have ​“engaged in vast sur­veil­lance of users with lax pri­va­cy con­trols and inad­e­quate safe­guards for kids and teens.” Their find­ings, pub­lished in a 2024 report, urged pol­i­cy­mak­ers and com­pa­nies to take action to lim­it data col­lec­tion and bet­ter pro­tect young users. 

For par­ents of teens, a mul­ti­pronged approach to social media man­age­ment is best, accord­ing to The Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. This approach includes enact­ing time lim­its, mon­i­tor­ing and super­vis­ing social media use and engag­ing youth in ongo­ing dis­cus­sions about their expe­ri­ences online. 

2. Be Aware of Com­mon Online Threats and Their Effects on Youth

There are many sta­tis­tics to illus­trate the sig­nif­i­cant pri­va­cy and secu­ri­ty risks in the dig­i­tal space. Two examples:

1. Social media plat­forms are one of the most com­mon phish­ing tar­gets, account­ing for over 30.5% of all phish­ing attacks in Q3 of 2024 and 22.5% of all phish­ing attacks in Q4 of 2024, accord­ing to the Anti-Phish­ing Work­ing Group.
2. The vast major­i­ty of data breach­es (68%) involve a non-mali­cious human ele­ment, such as users being tricked by social engi­neer­ing attacks, accord­ing to the 2024 Data Breach­es Inves­ti­ga­tions Report by Ver­i­zon. One exam­ple of this is when some­one clicks on a link and pro­vides infor­ma­tion that can lead to exploitation.

In the wrong hands, this data can be used to access and exploit an individual’s bank­ing and cred­it infor­ma­tion and even co-opt their dig­i­tal identity.

Oth­er risks teens may face when social­iz­ing online include engag­ing with inap­pro­pri­ate or harm­ful con­tent, such as videos that glo­ri­fy risky behav­iors or posts that con­tain mature lan­guage and images. The dig­i­tal space can also expose teenage chil­dren to threats like cyber­bul­ly­ing online sex­u­al abuse.

Near­ly half of U.S. teens (46%) have been bul­lied or harassed online, per a 2022 sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Pew Research Cen­ter. This study defined cyber­bul­ly­ing as any of the fol­low­ing six behaviors:

1. offen­sive name-calling;
2. spread­ing of false rumors;
3. send­ing unso­licit­ed explic­it images;
4. phys­i­cal threats;
5. con­stant­ly bad­ger­ing some­one (from a non-par­ent) about where they are, what they are doing and who they are with; and
6. shar­ing explic­it images of some­one with­out their approval.

Teen respon­dents were most like­ly to report being called an offen­sive name (32%) or hav­ing false rumors spread about them (22%).

Researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Chil­dren Research Cen­ter con­duct­ed a nation­al sur­vey to bet­ter under­stand how often U.S. chil­dren expe­ri­ence online sex­u­al abuse, includ­ing requests for sex­u­al pic­tures, forced sex­u­al talk, threats of sex­u­al con­tent shar­ing and more. The sur­vey results, pub­lished in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion in 2022, led the researchers to con­clude that ​“a con­sid­er­able por­tion of youth have expe­ri­enced online child sex­u­al abuse” and iden­ti­fied young peo­ple in the 13 to 17 age range as espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to these threats. 

Some oth­er key findings:

• Near­ly 16% of respon­dents report­ed expe­ri­enc­ing some form of online child sex­u­al abuse. 
• Two of the more com­mon forms of abuse were image-based sex­u­al abuse (11%) and non­con­sen­su­al sex­ting (7%).

A num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions are ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing inter­net and social media safe­ty for young peo­ple, including:

• Com­mon Sense Media: pro­duced a Teacher’s Essen­tial Guide to Cyber­bul­ly­ing Pre­ven­tion.
• The Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics: home to the Cen­ter of Excel­lence on Social Media and Youth Men­tal Health.
• The Kids Online Health and Safe­ty Task Force: released a 2024 report with rec­om­men­da­tions for the indus­try and best prac­tices for fam­i­lies on how to pro­mote safe inter­net usage.

3. Pro­mote Respon­si­ble Social Media Use Among Teens

Social media plat­forms are often chan­nels for false infor­ma­tion, mis­lead­ing con­tent and delib­er­ate­ly provoca­tive mes­sag­ing. Sep­a­rat­ing fact from fic­tion can be dif­fi­cult for even the most expe­ri­enced users.

Edu­ca­tors and experts are point­ing to dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy as a tool for fos­ter­ing safer social media habits among teens. For exam­ple: Boston Children’s Dig­i­tal Well­ness Lab encour­ages par­ents and care­givers to talk to their kids ear­ly and often about dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy to raise young users who can:

• rec­og­nize reli­able sources of information;
• dif­fer­en­ti­ate between facts and opinions;
• under­stand that not every­thing online is true;
• ver­i­fy claims using mul­ti­ple sources; and
• crit­i­cal­ly review con­tent for poten­tial bias­es, stereo­types, and hid­den agendas.

The non­prof­it Com­mon Sense Media is anoth­er wide­ly respect­ed source. It is home to a News and Media Lit­er­a­cy Resource Cen­ter and pro­duces dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship tool kits, includ­ing resources specif­i­cal­ly aimed at help­ing edu­ca­tors pro­mote news lit­er­a­cy in the classroom.

4. Under­stand the con­nec­tions between social media, screen time and teen men­tal health

A grow­ing body of research indi­cates that social media use can impact how young peo­ple see them­selves and how they feel.

Researchers from Boston Children’s Dig­i­tal Well­ness Lab asked young peo­ple ages 13 to 17 how social media impact­ed their body image. Near­ly half — 46% — report­ed feel­ing worse about them­selves while only 14% report­ed feel­ing bet­ter (the remain­ing 40% report­ed no change).

Chil­dren and ado­les­cents who spent more than three hours a day on social media faced dou­ble the risk of men­tal health prob­lems — includ­ing expe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms of depres­sion and anx­i­ety — accord­ing to a JAMA Psy­chi­a­try study.

Youth who sleep with devices in their room or who are heavy social media users run a greater risk of expe­ri­enc­ing sleep disturbances.

Con­sid­er­ing these exam­ples and oth­ers, it’s unsur­pris­ing that the U.S. Sur­geon Gen­er­al labeled social media ​“a mean­ing­ful risk” to young peo­ple and devot­ed a 2023 advi­so­ry to the topic.

Con­nect­Safe­ly, a non­prof­it ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing safe and secure tech­nol­o­gy use, offers strate­gies on sup­port­ing social media safe­ty for teens. They include:

• Turn­ing off track­ing. Par­ents: Ensure that your teen’s device has pri­va­cy set­tings turned on and loca­tion track­ing off. Con­firm that any apps in use are set to min­i­mize data collection.
• Social­iz­ing skep­ti­cal­ly. Teens: Think about what you post before you post it (espe­cial­ly if it’s sen­si­tive con­tent). Rec­og­nize the dif­fer­ence between real-life friends and online friends and pri­or­i­tize in-per­son activ­i­ties and friend­ships. Don’t talk about sex with strangers and avoid in-per­son meet­ings with peo­ple you’ve met online.
• Tak­ing action against cyber­bul­ly­ing. Teens: If you think cyber­bul­ly­ing is occur­ring, reach out to an adult you trust to talk it over. Don’t for­ward mes­sages or images that aren’t nice and tell oth­ers to stop.
• Acknowl­edg­ing the skewed view. Teens: Remem­ber that peo­ple typ­i­cal­ly post the best ver­sions of their lives and selves online. Don’t judge your­self and your life by the pol­ished nar­ra­tives pop­u­lat­ing social media. 
• Call­ing a time-out. Teens: If you are strug­gling with your men­tal health and spend­ing a lot of time online, con­sid­er going screen-free for a few days.
• Fol­low­ing along. Par­ents: Reg­u­lar­ly review your teen’s social media pages, talk about what they’re see­ing online and how they feel about it. Talk often about what healthy, safe and con­sid­er­ate social media use looks like.
• Set­ting lim­its. Par­ents: Restrict when your teen can and can­not be online. For exam­ple: To pro­mote healthy sleep habits, chil­dren should sleep in device-free bed­rooms and spend the hour before bed­time screen-free, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics.